For more than two years, former Bowie High School counselor Patricia Scott stood alone.

Scott, a 27-year-veteran educator at the El Paso Independent School District, was the first to offer evidence that grades and grade levels were being manipulated at Bowie High School.

But her October 2009 report of wrongdoing at the campus was not met with swift action and recognition for identifying potential illegal actions at the campus that denied students a proper education.

Instead, the documents were stowed away in a drawer for seven months, an internal audit that was later started to look at her allegations was not finalized for a year, and district leaders continued to deny wrongdoing until the El Paso Times in April revealed the findings of the internal audit and other documents.

"I knew it wasn't kosher," Scott said in an interview with the El Paso Times, her first public comments on the cheating scandal that has enveloped the district. "I knew right off the bat that it wasn't something we were supposed to be doing, but who was I going to go to? It all fell on deaf ears. No one would pay attention to me. For a while there I thought, 'I'm losing it, something's not right here, something is wrong.' "

Scott identified the transcripts of 77 students whose grade and grade levels had been manipulated at Bowie. It was that documentation and the resulting internal audit into her concerns of cheating at the campus that eventually became key pieces of evidence in the federal case against former Superintendent Lorenzo García.

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García pleaded guilty in June to two counts of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, including scheming with six unnamed district employees to rig the federal accountability system by keeping students from taking the 10th-grade state-mandated test.

Former Jefferson High Principal Steven Lane, who hired Scott after she applied and was feeling she was being pushed out of Bowie, said she stood up for students when no one else did despite the reprisals she faced.

"Pat Scott is one of the most heroic people I've ever met," Lane said. "She was by herself standing up when everyone should have stood up. She was the first one to stand up, and I will go to my grave admiring her because that took a lot of courage."

Reporting wrongdoing

Scott said she began checking credits for students who were supposed to be in the 10th grade during the 2008-09 school year after she was placed as the counselor in charge of sophomores at the school.

Scott said she looked at the students' transcripts in September 2009 and in October 2009, which is the month that determines which grade-level accountability tests students will take. In some cases, Scott said, she found students who had 7.5 credits in September but then had only 5.5 credits in October.

She said she reported those discrepancies to Luisa Kell, an assistant principal at Bowie High School. Scott said that in certain cases she went directly to the registrar to fix some of the discrepancies.

"The pattern was just a vicious pattern," Scott said. "I started to pick it up, and I would note that there was a difference in credits, so I would bring it to the attention of administration, to be more specific, Luisa Kell. All she would tell me is, 'I'll look into it,' and she would not pay much attention to it."

Kell said Scott's comments delved into personnel matters that she could not discuss.

"I respect Ms. Scott's opinion if she thinks that information was brought to me and not reported, but I think there is evidence to suggest the contrary," Kell said. She said she could not elaborate further on the evidence.

Scott said she grew frustrated after weeks of inaction on her reports of discrepancies. She said that is why in October 2009 she gave copies of 77 transcripts to Kathleen Ortega, the district's director of guidance services. Ortega declined an interview.

By then, Scott had chosen to transfer to Jefferson High School.

Scott said that in December 2009 she received calls from then-state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh about possible cheating at Bowie. She said she reported the phone calls to Ortega, and the two spoke with James Anderson, who is in charge of high schools at the district.

According to district documents, Ortega kept the transcripts in a drawer until five months later when Scott reported that she had received another call from Shapleigh and from the news media.

Shapleigh in May 2010 publicly accused the district of improperly classifying students so they wouldn't have to take the 10th-grade state assessment used for federal and state accountability measures.

"I didn't know Kathleen Ortega had kept those records," Scott said. "I honestly thought she had done something with them. I don't think she kept them in her desk. I really don't think she did."

Ortega suggested in her interview with the district's internal auditor that she did not report Scott's concerns to district administrators because she was protecting Scott.

"Her concern was her job," Ortega said, according to the auditor's notes obtained by the Times. "She hadn't given me permission. It was in confidence of her concern, 'What is going to happen to me?' Basically confidentiality until she said, 'I want some help.' I was respecting her decision-making ability. Letting her say (she was) ready to give info over."

Scott said she gave the documents to Ortega believing something would be done, but she added, "She really did protect me. I know she was protecting me."

Garcia ordered an internal audit into Scott's concerns in June 2010.

That audit was not completed until May 2011, the same date that the Department of Education had established as a deadline for the district to provide documents for a federal audit.

The audit revealed that in some cases students' grades were changed from passing to failing then changed back to passing; other instances showed that students did not take the correct state-mandated test; and yet other findings revealed that some students were jumped from ninth to 11th grade without explanation.

Reprimands for work

Scott said she endured a hostile environment from the moment in 2008 that Bowie Principal Jesus Chavez arrived at the campus. She said Chavez began doling out written reprimands that she believed were unjust.

Scott said she received several written reprimands before and after she reported discrepancies with grades at the campus. She said many of the reprimands seemed to be a form of retaliation because she questioned administrative practices at the campus.

Scott said she noticed that many of the students with discrepancies in their grades and grade levels were those who were not proficient in English. She said that when she asked some the teachers about the discrepancies, they said they had not agreed to such changes. The authority to change student grades falls solely with the teacher.

"One time I started to call the parents and I told them you have to come to the school and tell them this is happening, and the parents were well versed, and when that started happening that's when I started to get some of my other write-ups," Scott said.

"They (administrators) knew these parents weren't going to come in unless somebody told them, and I was the one who was telling the parents, 'You need to come and ask why your son or daughter is missing credits.' Some of the parents would outright tell me no because they weren't documented and they were afraid," she said.

In one case, Scott said, Chavez gave her a written reprimand because he was holding her accountable for the work of all the counselors.

"He thought because I was the head counselor, I needed to be responsible for checking all of the credit check sheets for all of the counselors and that's not what were supposed to do. Everybody had their own calculations to make," Scott said.

She said the job of overseeing the work of the counselors fell on the assistant principal in charge of guidance and instruction. At the time, Kell was that assistant principal, but Chavez said she was also new to the campus.

Chavez, in response to questions from the El Paso Times, said that before he arrived at Bowie, the campus' interim principal, Priscilla Terrazas, told him he needed to work to get rid of the counselors.

Chavez said he did not try to "get rid" of the counselors, but when he arrived at Bowie in 2008 he found discrepancies with student schedules, credits and transcripts. He said he reported his concerns to Damon Murphy, the associate superintendent in charge of the Priority Schools Division, and explained that he was facing some resistance from counselors.

Chavez said Murphy told him to work with central office staff to draft a written reprimand for Scott. Murphy could not be reached for comment.

Chavez said that at the time the reprimand seemed appropriate, but he said that as he looks back on the issue, he believes he might have handled things differently.

"Accountability needs to be held, but at that point the write-up should have been written differently, maybe further explaining it's not that it is Ms. Scott's fault, it's not that Ms. Scott is solely responsible for this but Ms. Scott, as a counselor, we are documenting she is going to be part of the solution," he said.

Scott recounted conversations she had with Lane while at Jefferson.

She said Lane had shared that Murphy asked him to reprimand her without any real reason. On a different occasion, she said, Chavez asked Lane whether he had given her any written reprimands.

Lane confirmed the conversations. Chavez said he never asked Lane whether he had given Scott a written reprimand.

"I was getting sick because of all the stress," she said. "If they would have taken my job away, I would have been in a big deep hole. I was so furious when I found out through Dr. Lane that Dr. Chavez had called to ask him whether he had written me up or not. I thought, 'I don't even work with him, what business is it of his?' "

Lane said Scott was always an exemplary employee. He recalled a conversation he said he had with Murphy during the same time frame.

"He said Garcia wanted to remind me of the motto, I think it was of the Priority Schools Division or just the motto to follow, and the exact words were, 'you should never miss an opportunity to write someone up,' " Lane said. "And that was the motto we were supposed to follow."

Tears formed in Scott's eyes as she dismissed descriptions of her as a hero for standing up and reporting wrongdoing at Bowie.

"It's part of my job," she said. "We have to."

Scott said she spoke up because she wanted to make sure someone stood up for the voiceless.

"I did it because I knew they were doing these kids wrong and they didn't have a voice," she said ."At Bowie, you don't have parents that come knocking on the doors and saying 'Why is it that my son or daughter is missing 2.5 credits, when I reviewed her transcript last week and it said that she had 7.5 credits?' You don't have those parents coming in. They're not going to come to you."

Zahira Torres may be reached at ztorres@elpasotimes.com; 512-479-6606.

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